QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLAND (Historic Information)

Queen Charlotte Island and the islands of Hecta Straits add but little to the mineral wealth of Canada. Likewise the timber, as it becomes softer, and I am clearly convinced that valuable timber can hardly be found north of Vancouver Island. But fish, millions of them, will afford occupation for all the natives and many Orientals and whites for centuries, and with the Alaskan waters will furnish half the export fish for the United States and a large portion for domestic use in the United States and Canada.

As we passed from behind the island we came for the first time into the real swells of the ocean. We had heard and read about rough seas in Queen Charlotte Sound, but the spirit of the matter did not come over us fully until we saw the chairs, furniture, dishes, tourists and all kinds of loose articles mixing without introduction. We said it must be a bad sea. It was. The swells were large. We both rolled and pitched, and some of us did other things.

But oh! oh! oh! the swooning of the ship. It went so far clown, and breakfast seemed to strive to come as far up each lime. True, the remedies bore down hard, but they were loo light, and with some other things came on deck or over the rail. It was the only seasickness on the trip, and but few cases of it.

We soon passed into Hecta Strait, named after Captain Bruno Hecta. a Spaniard, who explored on the coast in 1775. Queen Charlotte Island again shut out the swells of the ocean, about half of the tourists took lunch and all were able to surround the dinner table that evening.

Whale are very numerous in these waters, likewise porpoise, the latter often playing about the prow of the boat, and the former sometimes coming very near.